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Ralph Waldo Emerson 

A PAPER READ BEFORE THE 
"v. 

NEW YORK GENEALOGICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY 

December 14, 1883 



AFTERTHOUGHTS 



WILLIAM HAGUE, D.D 



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G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK : 27 & 29 WEST 23D STREET 
LONDON : 25 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN 



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31 



COPYRIGHT BY 

WILLIAM HAGUE, D.D. 



Press of 

G. P. Putnam s Sons 

Ntw York 



PREFATORY NOTES. 



The following "paper" would have been issued from the 
press at an earlier date, in accordance with the call of the 
Genealogical and Biographical Society, December 14, 1883, 
but for the detention of the writer away from the city by 
several weeks of illness. Despite all detentions, however, I 
have been favored with opportunities for enjoying Mr. 
Matthew Arnold's recent " Lecture on Emerson," both as 
a listener and a reader, and have taken occasion to offer a 
supplement of Afterthoughts, suggested by the Essayist's 
judgments. Meanwhile many friends have inquired as to 
the fortunes of the " paper," and called renewedly for its 
publication. Of all these I am reminded by a communica- 
tion from one whose friendly words often prove factors in 
good attempts, either great or small, Rt. Rev. Henry C. 
Potter, D.D., Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of New York : 

New York, January 16, 1884. 
My Dear Dr. Hague : 

You have not forgotten, I trust, your promise to consider 
the matter of putting your Reminiscences of Emerson into a 
more permanent form. I am sure they will interest a wider 
circle of readers than that which has thus far seen them ; and I 
venture to hope that these may ere long be permitted to have 
them. Faithfully yours, 

H. C. POTTER, 

In this connection we are happy to present a communica- 



IV PREFATORY NOTES. 

tion of kindred tone from Rev. William R. Williams, D.D., 
of New York: 

27 Grove Street, 

December 21, 1883. 
My Dear Dr. Hague : 

Your personal acquaintance with Ralph Waldo Emerson 
at the turning-point in his history, and in years after, gives your 
personal reminiscences of him marked value. The relations 
of his philosophical views to the New Platonism of earlier 
times, and their bearing on the Materialism, Agnosticism, and 
Pantheism that emerge in our own age, are worthy to be seriously 
pondered. I trust your Essay may be fitly published and widely 
read. Yours truly, 

WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS. 

In this connection, also, I introduce a communication 
from the Rev. John Lord, LL.D., author of " Ancient 
States and Empires," "Old Roman World," etc.: 

New York, Feb. 29, 1884. 
Dear Doctor Hague : 

I am glad to learn that your paper on Emerson, with whom you 
were so long and well acquainted, is soon to be published. You 
will render a service in showing how far Neo-Platonism, the Phi- 
losophy of Plotinus, entered into his writings. 

Most truly, 

J. LORD. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON : LIFE AND 
PHILOSOPHY. 

In an article lately published in a Boston journal, com- 
memorating several names pertaining to " the transition 
period " signalized by the advent of the railroad povver^ 
(1830-34), the chronological point of distinction between 
Old and New Boston, mention was made of an introduction 
to the Rev. Ralph Waldo Emerson, colleague of Rev. 
Henry Ware, Jr., in the ministry of the Second Unitarian 
Church ; his relation to me as my nearest clerical neighbor 
being emphasized at the time, soon after my inauguration 
to the ministry of the First Baptist Church, then approach- 
ing the one hundred and sixty-sixth anniversary of its birth- 
year. The article thus put forth in Boston has suggested 
the invitation that brings before this Society, to-night, this 
paper with its theme set for the hour of our monthly gath- 
ering. 

The introduction here noted having occurred in 1 831, at 
the house of mutual friends, where Mr. Emerson's participa- 
tion in a funeral service indicated his parochial relation to a 
part of the bereaved family circle, rendered the occasion 
notable as the starting-point of a welcomed acquaintance- 
ship. His manner was genially responsive, while his coun- 
tenance, tone and bearing were suggestive, apart from all 
culture, of a rarely gifted nature. Though only five years 
older than myself, his position as the colleague of the Rev. 
Henry Ware, Jr., invested him with a certain prestige of 
dignity equivalent to an additional decade of years, and 



2 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

made the likelihood of meeting him often prospectively 
interesting. Our wide parochial surroundings of more than 
a century's growth in a homogeneous community, would 
constantly furnish apt occasions for friendly intercourse on 
matters of common concern, municipal or educational. It 
seemed, just then, that any observing stranger, even at a 
first meeting, would be quick to recognize the presence of a 
unique, transparent personality ; a free, self-reliant mind 
uttering itself without restraint and without guile ; not fluent, 
as that of a trained talker watching the impressions he is 
making, but with speech aptly winning, spontaneous as that 
of a little child impelled to find expression for the thought 
or feeling of the moment. 

MENTAL UNREST AS TO CHURCH ORGANISM. 

Even at that early period it was often, from my point of 
view, a matter of wonder that a man so highly gifted, dis- 
tinguished by degrees of insight and of far-sight so excep- 
tional, with a positive Christian faith so inconsiderable, could 
be content or at all able to bear the routine of a pastorate 
requiring weekly pulpit services necessarily characterized 
by statements or by implications of relative non-belief 
rather than any order of truths supernaturally and di- 
vinely revealed. My personal conviction was that, with 
simply natural ethics to inculcate, I could have no heart 
to meet the regular calls of a ministry that arose in the 
first century as the exponent of a gospel supernaturally 
attested, implying thus a lively faith in certain historical 
facts, all vecal with teachings that enkindled the highest 
style of enthusiasm, a new uplifting power to every recip- 
ient. Surely, I said, — now and then soliloquizing, — surely I 
would be obliged to abandon the pulpit and take to litera- 
ture, or drift into communism, or seek the platform as a 
lecturer on philosophy or history, or perhaps political 
economy embracing the relations of labor and capital ; or 
on some mastered specialty of thought or enterprise that 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 3 

could " possess my soul " as the one work given me to do. 
A professional relation that would require me to use the 
traditional terms and phraseologies of the Christian minis- 
try for secular ends, emphasizing my non-beliefs, would be 
to me tedious, incongruous, distasteful, and intolerable. 

These soliloquies turned out to be instinctively prophetic, 
verified by experiences of historic interest. To that issue 
Mr. Emerson came, ere long, with the most calm and settled 
determination. The statement of reasons for this " new 
departure," was made to me by Mr. Emerson himself, about 
the time of its occurrence, in a casual conversation, as here 
recorded, with the occasion that called it forth. 

It chanced that on a Monday morning, in 1832, we met in 
the street, each carrying a little hand-satchel. Approach- 
ing, we exchanged salutations, and then followed this brief 
talk: 

" Mr. Emerson, it seems that we are travellers to-day, 
going in opposite directions, and our time, therefore, is 
limited ; but if you have a minute's margin, I should like, 
for information, to put a question which no one except your- 
self can fitly answer." 

" Do so freely," he replied ; " I am not in a hurry ; I have 
margin enough of time." 

" Well, I will tell you then, that I am boarding with my 
little family at Mrs. Wilson's, on Green Street, where I 
enjoy the society of several of your parishioners and friends 
as companions in table-talk, and find that your people are 
greatly agitated by the report that you have renounced the 
observance of the Lord's Supper, and refuse all participation 
in it as a religious rite. Loth as I am to say a word un- 
advisedly touching a matter of such personal interest, I 
should like to be informed in regard to two points: Ls the 
alleged renunciation a fact ? If so, — the ground of it ? " 

" Yes," he answered, " it is a fact, and the ground of it is 
my conviction that in the development of religions we have 
outgrown all need of this externalism, or the like of it, in any 



4 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

way whatsoever. This conviction has been intensified by 
fresh readings of the leading Quaker writers, with whom I 
find myself in sympathy." 

To this I replied : " Thanks ; your statement of reasons is 
satisfactory as explanation ; normally developed, I should 
say, from your point of view ; nevertheless, I presume your 
sympathies have gone beyond the bounds of Quakerdom, 
even over into Asia, attracted by affinities with some ideas 
of older origin." 

This allusion to a Pantheistic trend provoked a smile that 
seemed to say : " Your guess is suggestive, but we must go." 
And so we parted quickly, to make sure of redeeming the 
time that this short episodal talk had cost us. 

HIS POSITION EXCEPTIONALLY ATTRACTIVE. 

The withdrawal of Mr. Emerson from all churchly organ- 
ism was gently but decisively accomplished. He used to 
say : " Let every man be his own church." That rather 
queer phrasing anticipated whole pages of his essay-writing. 
It made the ultimate issue quite plain to the common 
mind. As soon as this step of his early career had been 
taken, my personal interest in his course and style of action 
as an independent man, an original personality, was greatly 
quickened ; my communication with him became more 
free, unembarrassed by any degree of sensitiveness as to the 
proprieties pertaining to official or clerical relations. See- 
ing that he had broken away from ecclesiasticism entirely, 
ignoring at once all external or supernatural revelation, 
still asserting himself as a philosophical and religious 
teacher, " falling back on Nature," the recipient of fresh 
truths as a familiar correspondent in direct communication 
with Nature, I became more and more curious to learn how 
a mind thus strongly trending would see and report to us 
the past, present, and future of this mysterious universe 
wherein we live. Appreciating, as I did, sympathetically, 
his dissatisfaction with his inherited church-position, I de- 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 5 

sired to trace the lone way of his " new departure." This 
feeling was strengthened by the free scope accorded to it ; 
for he always talked as one quite sure that the plainest 
speech, the most direct way of " putting things," was best 
liked, and he thus constantly awakened in one the feeling, 
that he never could be offended by the sharpest antagonism 
of a sincere man. This childlike simplicity, this " believ- 
ing and therefore speaking," was of itself a life-long power, 
characterizing not only the casual or private talk, but also 
the set public address. In this connection, I may say, 
incidentally, that its free expression was once somewhat 
startling to me, and, to many, quite amusing, on a certain 
occasion, the meeting of the American Institute, composed 
mainly of teachers, at the State Capitol, where he delivered 
the opening discourse. Having finished my appointed ser- 
vice as chaplain, and offered the introductory prayer, he, at 
once stepping into the place I had occupied, commenced 
his address with a brilliant paragraph containing a par- 
enthetic affirmation of the uselessness of prayer ! 

TENTATIVE STEPS TO THE NEW CAREER. 

During several years following the period here 
noted, the opportunities for occasionally meeting Mr. Em- 
erson were not quite so continuous as might have been 
reasonably hoped for. Early in the year 1832 he had been 
bereaved of the wife of his youth ; and then, ere long, the 
state of his health suggested his visit to Europe in 1833, a 
year well remembered by Thomas Carlyle, as an era of his 
home history signalized by the acquisition of Mr. Emer- 
son's acquaintance. After his return to America, he was 
not so much in our neighborhood as had been his wont. In 
1834 Concord became his abiding home-centre, where he 
devoted himself to reading, study, and literary work, keep- 
ing himself in communication with Boston and the world 
at large mainly by means of lectures, single or in series, 
availing himself of the Lyceum platform, which, at the 



O RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

time, seemed to him a rising power destined to supersede 
the pulpit. At this period, particularly, he embraced 
within his range of study, the old Neo-Platonic Mysti- 
cism, as taught by Plotinus (3d century), by Porphirius 
(3rd and 4th), and by Proclus (5th century), tracing, 
too, its modern developments — especially in Germany. 
In 1835 he established his household by a second mar- 
riage, and in 1836 he put forth his first volume anony- 
mously, (calling it " an entering wedge,") ninety-three 
pages, entitled " NATURE," the first sentence whereof, in 
the spirit of the authors above named, afifirmed the in- 
validity of all external or supernatural revelations, and 
the all-sufificiency of every soul's own intercommunica- 
tion with Nature for realizing the highest possibilities of 
humanity. The motto upon the title-page was a quotation 
from Plotinus: "Nature is but an image or imitation of 
Wisdom, the last thing of the soul ; nature being a thing 
which doth only do, but not know." In the first words of 
this new book, the writer appealed to the century against 
the primary claim of Christianity, exclaiming : " The fore- 
going generations beheld God and Nature face to face ; 
we, through their eyes : why should not we enjoy also an 
original relation to the universe? Why should not we have 
a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and 
a religion by revelation to us and not the history of 
theirs?" 

GENERAL REUNION IN PROVIDENCE, R. I. 

During the following year, 1837, soon after my removal 
from Boston to Providence, " The New Views " were made 
more familiar than ever to the thought and talk of an ex- 
tending circle of readers and students, whose interest was 
quickened by the enlivening presence of Margaret Fuller, 
"a born teacher," and also the centre of a Sociality whose 
bond of union was intellectual culture. As one of a special 
evening class readily gathering around her for the study 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 7 

of the German language and literature, I was naturally led 
by the incidental topics of conversation to a more continu- 
ous turning of thought in this new line of advancement. 
At this time her helpful friend, Mr. Emerson, shared her 
companionship and the social life of Providence for several 
weeks, having accepted an invitation to deliver a course of 
lectures. 

At the close of that series he announced as supplemen- 
tary, " A Lecture on Religion," to be delivered at another 
hall " across the bridge." A large audience answered the 
call. Among the listeners I occupied a seat near the 
speaker, and as soon as the lecture was ended, he addressed 
to me a remark that led to the following conversation : 

" I think, Mr. Emerson, this whole audience would agree in 
saying that your tracing of the character of Jesus, his spirit 
and style of action as a man and a teacher, was marvellously 
apt, just, and beautiful, giving to us fresh impressions of 
his moral greatness as the inaugurator of a new era. A 
unique paragraph of Rousseau has often been quoted as 
eloquently appreciative ; but there seems to me nothing 
extant in literature that surpasses the characterization you 
have presented here. Yet, in regard to one suggested point 
I am somewhat puzzled— namely, the question : What re- 
lation does the testimony of the miracles of Jesus, af^rmed 
by himself as well as the witnesses, sustain to your line of 
historic thought ? I have imagined that it maybe to yours, 
relatively, what the story told at the opening of Plato's life 
has been to mine ; there it has been said, you know, that 
while he lay in his cradle the bees came and shed honey on 
his lips ; on reading which I say to myself, that is a very 
pretty story, but whether it be true or not is a matter of 
no account." 

"Yes," Mr. Emerson replied, "you have answered your 
own question ; the illustration is good." 

" If so," I rejoined, " I am now the more perplexed ; for 
suppose Plato had gone forth as a teacher throughout^Greece, 



5 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

addressing the common people as well as the scholars, and 
claiming the acceptance of his teachings not only as self- 
witnessing, but as divine communications verified at will by 
superhuman works recognized as responses to the teacher's 
words from the one Author of the surrounding sense-world 
and spirit-world alike, thus attesting an exceptional unity 
and a supreme authority, what would you have said of 
Plato?" 

" Why, certainly," the reply was, " I should have said 
that Plato was a great charlatan." 

" Well, then," I asked, " why not say outright the very same 
of Jesus, that Jie was a great charlatan, seeing that this was 
exactly what he did throughout the land of Palestine ? " 

With a quietly musing, meditative air, Mr. Emerson 
seemed for a moment to be extemporizing an answer, when 
a group of friends, students and others, came pressing for- 
ward with their personal greetings, so that the opportunity 
for further talk in this direction was suddenly ended. We 
regretted the interruption. 

ERA OF "THE NEW PULPIT." 

At the time here noted, Mr. Emerson's forecastings and 
his tentative efforts upon platforms had interpreted them- 
selves as the initiation of a new career. It was not far from 
the period of his visits to Providence, as a Lecturer, that he 
came, after many questionings, to the full recognition of his 
own life-calling, as one impelled by his genius and "ordained 
by Nature," to the work of the Platform. In January, 1829, 
he had been by a regular council, ordained to the work of 
the church-pulpit ; now, he was exulting in his sense of 
freedom from all traditional bonds and in his welcomes to 
the " New Pulpit," where, as he said, " there is no prescrip- 
tion." Assured of fit audience, this fresh feeling of liberty 
was as a new start in life. Already he had characterized the 
turn of the time by referring to the groups gathering around 
him as "ladies and gentlemen without a religion seeking a 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 9 

new one," and some one or more of these had characterized 
him as " the Apostle of the Eternal Reason." 

This style of expression became to us gradually familiar, 
especially after my return to Boston, in 1840, as minister of 
the Federal Street Baptist Church, near the time of the 
memorable notice of a course of lectures to be given forth 
from the pulpit of Dr. Channing, in Federal Street, by his 
colleague, Rev. Dr. Ezra S. Gannett, who prefaced that 
announcement by stating that for twenty years the Unita- 
rian pulpits having been mainly engaged in dealing with 
ethical and practical matters had left to the press the dis- 
cussion of central doctrines, so that a generation had grown 
up under their ministries not knowing what to believe. To 
aid in meeting this need, he advertised a course of lectures 
for six successive Sunday evenings, on " Christ and Christi- 
anity." That call drew crowds of listeners. This connec- 
tion of things indicated not only a certain awakening of 
thought at the time, but the new field of work also that 
seemed, from Mr. Emerson's point of view, fast widening 
around him, flushed with budding promises. His way had 
been more than twenty years in process of preparation. He 
welcomed his opportunities. He " discerned the signs " of 
^w sky. The responsive moods of mind wherein the more 
youthful audiences greeted the new ideas so musically 
voiced from the platform, reacted upon him, as helps to 
larger aims, to a more persistently working force exerted 
through class gatherings, anniversary orations, issues from 
the press in pamphlet-form, book-form, and special articles 
of magazine literature. 

THE NEW ENTHUSIASM AND ITS EXPONENT. 

A genuine enthusiasm was thus enkindled. Who could 
define its range ? Some ardent minds predicted immediate 
and boundless conquests, somewhat like the friends of 
Charles Fourier in France, who exclaimed, in 1839: "If 
Fourierism has already won twenty thousand adherents, 



lO RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

why may it not, in due time, gain twenty millions, or thirty^ 
and thus reconstruct the nation ? " As a fit exponent of 
this rising Western Transcendentalism a new magazine was 
projected ; and, after many hesitations as to the most 
worthy name for characterization, it was made "presenta- 
ble " by Mr. Emerson, as well as by Margaret Fuller, 
and named The Dial. The Athenian taste of the really 
curious or inquiring spirits, "seeking a new religion," was 
met by stimulations of brilliant thought, as well as by pro- 
found psychological intuitions ; yet it was in this line of 
direction that the new enthusiasm, grappling with practical 
issues, including the financial problem, discovered its first 
sign of limitation. Despite the originality of the writing, 
the generosity of the staff of writers, the lack of golden 
responses proved that the appreciative or sympathetic 
minds were but a small fraction of the reading public. The 
day arrived ere long (1843), when the sales would not pay 
the expenses, and the ideal Dial gracefully withdrew 
itself to the higher shelves of the home-study, or the shaded 
archives of the public library. Thither some elite scholar 
of each successive generation will find his way, in order to 
muse over its pages and report to his own time the historic 
significance of the ideal school that it represented. 

HALF A LIFETIME "AT HIS BEST." 

Mr. Emerson's interest in The Dial, however, was sym- 
pathetic rather than directly personal. Its departure was, 
no doubt, more of a disappointment to Margaret Fuller 
than to him, though for the sake of his "young friends" he 
desired its success. During the two decades that preceded 
the Civil War (1841-61), and most of the decade and a half 
that followed, comprising a little more than a third of a 
century, he appeared continually "at his best," in the very 
prime of his power. He greatly enjoyed, in the main, his 
professional trips, far and near; often derived exhilaration 
from them, and thus we have known him appear to advan- 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON, II 

tage as a conversationalist amid the chance society of a rail- 
way excursion. In this connection I am reminded that it 
was once my pleasure to introduce to him Rev. Dr. Cald- 
well, now President of Vassar College, to whose compan- 
ionship Mr. Emerson took kindly, with a decided zest, for 
the day or two following. Arriving at Buffalo they stayed 
at the same hotel, and there my engagements took me away 
from them in another direction. In the evening Mr. Emer- 
son accepted Dr. Caldwell's invitation to look in upon the 
meeting of the American Baptist Missionary Union, where 
Rev. Dr. Parker, of Cambridgeport, was to give an account 
of his visit to the Baptist churches of France. Dr. Parker 
was graphically interesting in the putting of his facts, so 
that there was no dull listener in the house. Afterward, 
meeting Dr. Caldwell, I inquired : " Did Mr. Emerson say 
any thing suggested by the sayings or doings of the meet- 
ing?" " Oh, yes," replied the doctor, " he spoke of it freely, 
and I can hardly tell you how greatly amused he seemed to 
be with the mere idea of the Baptist Missionary Union 
attempting in earnest the conversion of France ! " 

That reply, by the way, has of late, often recurred to my 
thought suggestively. When it was uttered France was an 
empire, and at that time I knew of some who were hoping and 
praying that they might live to see France a republic and 
all religion free. Ere long the empire fell and then The 
Nation^ of New York, well said : " After the lapse of a thou- 
sand years France must now begin again and build up anew 
from the very foundations." Even so : eight years ago I stood 
in the vestibule of the Chamber of Deputies at Versailles, 
conversing with one of the evangelical leaders of France, 
Rev. Dr. Pressens^, in preceding years the able correspon- 
dent of The WatcJunan, of Boston, then the representative 
in the National Legislature of the Department of *' The 
Seine y exulting as never before in the freedom of the re- 
public, the great awakening of the popular mind, and 
the brightening prospects of primitive Christianity. 



12 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

Throughout the whole period, just noted, of Mr. Emer- 
son's professional life as lay-lecturer and as essayist, his 
mental poise, his tone, spirit, and genial manner seemed 
ever the same. Occasional meetings and greetings are now 
vivid memories; especially as pertaining to his later years, 
those which occurred while I was associated with him in 
the Library Committeeship of Harvard University. In those 
casual or incidental talks, wherein there is no premeditation, 
and thought springs spontaneously " free and easy " from 
suggestions serious or trivial, it was quite noteworthy how 
intimately associated with all kinds of topics was some 
word or action of his sylvan friend, Henry Thoreau, whom 
Emerson had lovingly introduced to literature by means of 
The Dial, the first contribution being a poem published in 
the first number. 

Thus it happened, one day, that Mr. Emerson was 
passing the house of Dr. Robbins, dentist, just as I was 
leaving it ; and, while on the top of the steps, closing the 
door behind me, he hailed me from the sidewalk with the 
greeting : " Pray, what have you been doing there ? " 

"I have been getting a mutilated mouth repaired," was 
my reply. 

"Indeed; have you come to that already? When 
Thoreau reached that stage of experience, and the opera- 
tion had been ended, he exclaimed: ' What a pity that I 
could not have known betimes how much Art outdoes Na- 
ture in this kind of outfit for life, so that I might have 
spoken for such a set to start with ! ' " 

In the conversation that followed, Mr. Emerson spoke 
with curious interest of what had been lately written on 
brain-power, and the recent commendations of Scotch oat- 
meal, fish, wild birds, and articles of diet wherein Nature, 
by providing stores of phosphatic sustenance, had wrought 
with such motherly care for the health of our brain-life. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 1 3 

FREE PLAY OF CONFLICTING JUDGMENTS IN ENGLAND. 

In his persistent and effective use of the platform and the 
press from the very beginning of his professional career, Mr. 
Emerson was progressively gaining audience at home and 
abroad; the law of "elective affinities" having asserted 
itself with special vigor in England, where it was noticed as 
early as 1842 that the "Radicals" were circulating his 
lecture, " Man, the Reformer," read January 25, 1841, be- 
fore the Mechanics' and Apprentices' Library, of Boston. 
At that time the Free-Thought Associations of England 
indicated a higher tone of vitality than any of their kin in 
this country. Thus the way of Mr. Emerson's visit to Eng- 
land, five years afterward, as an invited lecturer, was 
gradually prepared, and a community of minds educated 
to welcome him, even with sympathetic appreciation. 
Nevertheless, though in listening there was unity of in- 
terest, the judgments of the listeners were sharply con- 
flicting — not only of one hearer in relation to another, but 
of each individual mind at different moments, varying with 
the contrasted moods induced by the original, self-witness- 
ing, and the directly antithetic affirmatives of oracular, 
sybilline tone, abounding in every lecture. 

Caroline Fox, in her " Memories of Old Friends," pub- 
lished a year or more ago, records this observation of Mrs. 
Jane Carlyle : " She thought no good would come of Mr. 
Emerson's writings, and grants that he is arrogant and short- 
coming." This record is the more noteworthy because it is 
well known that Mrs. Carlyle had expressed in strong terms, 
written and unwritten, her interest in reading Mr. Emerson 
as almost exclusive, rendering her indifferent, comparatively, 
to all other writings except those of her husband. Both 
statements may be truthful ; not at all contradictory, what- 
soever, at first, the verbal seeming may suggest. For the 
works of Mr. Emerson, regarded as a whole, exhibit con- 
flicting elements of the actual and speculative, the real and 
fanciful, the self-witnessing generalization, and the illusive.- 



14 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

half-truth, so that we are by turns, short or long, attracted 
and repelled, uplifted and depressed, instructed and mysti- 
fied, fascinated and shocked, charmed by a poetic optimism, 
and horrified by a logically and practically inevitable pes- 
simism, like that voiced by Schopenhauer as a regular 
evolution of the data furnished by " Eternal Nature." 
From the standpoint occupied by Mr. Emerson he could 
reveal no way of escape for us from the combination of ter- 
rible forces traced by Schopenhauer ; could do nothing, in 
fact, but what he did — namely, denounce the philosopher 
and his doctrine as " dispiriting " and " odious." But this 
mere emotionalism brings no relief from the horror of that 
pessimistic abyss. The trend of the younger Free-Thought 
School of Germany to-day is to the enthronement of 
Schopenhauer as the imperial thinker, not fully recognized 
by his own age, but the philosopher-laureate of ours. If 
we would form a comprehensively just estimate of Mr. 
Emerson's prose writings, we must treat them in a manner 
analogous to that of Plato's criticisms of Homer, set forth 
in the second book of the " Republic." There Plato, in con- 
cert with Socrates, discriminates the qualities of Homer's 
great epic, and demands the exclusion from the ideal re- 
public of the poet's conceptions of the character and conduct 
■of the gods, on account of their influence in demoralizing 
the Republic's youth. Even the greatest work of " the 
godlike Homer " Plato would bring to trial by the test- 
question : " What fruitage?" From the copies of the Iliad 
admitted to circulation he required the elimination of cer- 
tain mythological elements. So, when Mr. Emerson's 
transcendental intuitions or ecstatic revelations, taking form 
as oracles, interpret the universe to us pantheistically, bid- 
ding every soul, though sincerely denying the existence of 
a personal God, to abandon itself to a blind instinct of 
Nature-worship whensoever the ecstatic mood shall impel 
to the adoration of nature, we recognize the ideal identity 
.with that old paganism that did actually demoralize Grecian 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 1$ 

manhood despite its culture, and subordinated cultured 
intellect to an ascetic Orientalism on the one hand, or, on 
the other, to a sensual Nature-worship akin to that whereof 
Paul spoke as abandonment to " a reprobate mind," and 
whose Oriental sacred writings Max Miiller has sadly said 
he can not make presentable throughout, by a fair trans- 
lation, to English-speaking peoples. 

THE CENTRAL IDEA OF THIS MYSTIC SCHOOL CHARAC- 
TERIZED AS ANTI-CHRISTIAN. 

To particularize: in his lecture on "Self-Reliance" Mr. 
Emerson puts the central thought of his teaching in a short 
preceptive sentence, thus: " In your metaphysics you have 
denied personality to the Deity; yet when the devout 
motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, 
though they should clothe God with shape and color." 
This is an apt expression of the interior spirit of that 
Alexandrian Neo-Platonism, represented by several writers, 
from Plotinus of the third century to Proclus of the fifth 
(to the study of whose works Mr. Emerson especially gave 
himself for a year or more preceding the issue of his first 
volume, " Nature "); a scholastic sectarianism which, while 
it found scope and play for the intellect in philosophy, 
eliminated intellectuality from worship, subjecting that, in 
its purest character and style, to blind emotional instinct ; 
thus setting up a sharp antithesis to that essential idea of 
Christian worship which Jesus uttered, in view of the mon- 
grel or eclectic religionism of the Samaritans, when He 
said: "We know what we worship; ye worship ye know 
not what!" Even so : Christianity recognizes no worship 
as genuine when emptied of this intellectual discernment 
of its object, while paganism degrades humanity by giving 
supremacy to a blinding fanciful caprice under the name of 
religion. From first to last such worship is, in fact, a mere 
superstition. Thus, when a missionary in India found a 
pagan man worshipping before a picture as a household 



1 6 RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 

god, he ventured to inquire of the worshipper if he knew 
what the picture represented. The devout man said he 
did not know. "It is," said the missionary "a picture of 
the Emperor Napoleon." " Oh, well," said the worshipper, 
"you know we must worship something !" 

DOWNWARD TREND OF THE (SO-CALLED) GREEK SCHOOL. 

In rerard to the Neo-Platonic School which seems to 
have attracted so strongly Mr. Emerson's youthful sympa- 
thies, it is worthy of note in this connection that John 
Stuart Mill, as a literary critic, fitly characterized it eighteen 
years ago, in an article on " Grote's Plato," EdinburgJi Re- 
view, April, 1866, wherein, after noting the completeness of 
Grote's work as far as it had gone, he proceeds thus: " If 
to this were added a summary of what is known to us con- 
cerning the Pythagorean revival and the later Academy, no 
portion of purely Greek thought would remain untreated 
of ; for Neo-Platonicism, an aftergrowth of late date and 
little intrinsic value, was a hybrid product of Greek and 
Oriental speculation, and its place in history is by the side 
of Gnosticism. What contact it has with the Greek mind 
is with that mind in its decadence ; as the little in Plato 
which is allied to it belongs chiefly to the decadence of 
Plato's own mind. We are quite reconciled to the exclu- 
sion from Mr. Grote's plan of this tedious and unsatisfac- 
tory chapter in the history of the human intellect."* The 
subtle affinity between Mr. Emerson's distinctive style 
and line of thought and the old Gnosticism, a self-asserting 
transcendental philosophy, is quite clearly apparent. His 
completed life-work presents him to the world as the first 
New Englander, or rather American writer, whose specula- 
tive trend of mind took sympathetically to the Gnostic 
ideas, and whose inherited proclivity as a born New Eng- 
lander necessitated the effort to combine those Oriental ele- 

* " Dissertations and Discussions, Political, Philosophical, and Historical." 
Vol. iv., pp. 22S, 229. New York : Henry Holt & Co. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 1/ 

ments with the shrewd common-sense of practical Yankee 
life. Yet, alas, there is no vital unity. The incongruity 
is glaring and balks all effort to naturalize the alien mysti- 
cism as an aider to home-culture. The American will live 
out his supreme ideas, whatsoever they may be, in religion 
as well as in politics. Let him abandon the idea of a per- 
sonal God, a divine Fatherhood, as primevally revealed, and 
he, then logically Agnostic, will not worship at all, utterly 
repelling the Mystic's thought of an ecstatic worship "WITH- 
OUT ideas" ; or, if he yield to the mental inebriation of an 
aesthetic, emotional Nature-worship, he will drift to the 
extreme of naturalistic spontaneitj^, ignoring the mere 
thought of sin or evil as a fossil conventionalism, and say, 
perhaps, like the gay young Ingersolian, vindicating his 
moral lawlessness: " It is pure nature ; what is nice to me 
is nice to God !" 

Hence, what fruitage? Moral and social disintegration 
is the normal aftergrowth. 

FORECASTING OF ULTIMATE ISSUES. 

This view of the normal issue of an actual transportation 
of the Neo-Platonic Mysticism into the popular religious 
conceptions of our own age as an element of " Modern 
Thought " is not discredited, to say the least, by Mr. Em- 
erson's characterization of the moral tone of his own time, 
after the lapse of nearly half a century from the beginning 
of his career. In his article entitled " The Sovereignty of 
Ethics," published in the North American Revieiv, May, 
1878, he clearly recognizes moral retrogression rather than 
advancement, saddened by the signs of the outlook. Having 
referred to men of the past, he thus disparages those of the 
present: "I confess our later generation appears ungirt, 
frivolous, compared with the religions of the last or Calvin- 
istic age. There was in the last century a serious, habitual 
reference to the spiritual world, running through diaries, 
letters, and conversations — yes, and into wills and legal 



15 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

instruments also, — compared with wliich our liberation 
looks a little foppish and dapper. The religion of seventy 
years ago was as an iron belt to the mind, giving it concen- 
tration and force. A rude people were kept respectable by 
the determination of thought upon the eternal world. Now 
men fall abroad, want polarity, suffer in character and intel- 
lect. A sleep creeps over the great functions of man ; en- 
thusiasm goes out. In its stead a low prudence seeks to 
hold society staunch ; but its arms are too short ; cordage 
and machinery never supply the place of life. The more 
intellectual reject every yoke of authority with a petulance 
unprecedented. It is a sort of mark of probity and sincer- 
ity to declare how little you believe, while the mass of the 
community indolently follow the old forms with childish 
scrupulousness, and we have punctuality for faith, and good 
taste for character." 

Day by day this disparaging characterization becomes 
more profoundly significant. It is virtually an historic testi- 
mony as to " seeding and fruitage " within the writer's field 
of observation. But whence this tone of surprise ? Why 
wonder ? Can any higher style of character or any better 
moral issues be fairly looked for from any religion whatso- 
ever, old or new, that can ignore a personal God — ignore 
the reality of sin as a positive force, and afifirm as one of its 
"dogmata " that "evil is only good in the making" ? Can 
any religion thus assert itself and yet continue to realize its 
own ideal as an uplifting or a transforming power ? No, 
never! The old Christian recognition of "a law of sin " 
that is itself gravitation to a moral abyss, on the one hand, 
and a personal union to Christ by a loving faith as in itself 
redemptive power and eternal life, on the other, is the 
tested remedy "worthy of all acceptation." 

AFTERTHOUGHTS. 

Since the foregoing paper was read before the Genealogi- 
cal and Biographical Society the leading critical essayist 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 1 9 

of England, Mr. Matthew Arnold, has delivered his 
"judicial" lecture on Emerson, in Boston and New York, 
before large audiences listening with varied emotions of 
sympathy or antipathy. In his analysis and summing up 
of Mr. Emerson's life-work Mr. Arnold spoke " as one hav- 
ing authority." He made four salient points. First of 
all he criticised Mr. Emerson as a poet and affirmed that, 
according to the Miltonic canon, Mr. Emerson was not 
a great poet. Then, after brief consideration, came forth 
the announcement that, tried by the highest standards, Mr. 
Emerson does not take rank with the world's "great 
men of letters " ; he was not a great writer. Thirdly, 
it was determined, despite the most brilliant flashes of 
philosophizing, piercing at times to the core of things, Mr. 
Emerson was not a great philosopher, lacking entirely 
the faculty of a builder or philosophical constructor. 

CHARACTERIZATIONS : THE VAGUE AND THE DEFINED. 

By the time these limitations and negatives had been 
skilfully put the receptive mind of the audience had become 
keenly inquisitive as to what positive power remained to 
abide the tests of time as a permanent distinction. The 
answer to that main question of the moment, now expected 
at once by the mute assembly, was not given in terms 
clear, plain, simple, and self-explanatory, like the terms that 
had expressed the three preceding judgments. Far from 
it; the summary answer to the remaining question affirmed 
that Mr. Emerson's chief and distinctive power was 
like that of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, known as " the 
Friend and Aider of those who would live in the Spirit." 
To many of the listeners that designation of a class 
conveyed no distinct idea; it was puzzling and bewildering. 
Nevertheless, the phrase was quite familiar as a Scriptural 
expression, often employed, especially by the Apostle Paul 
who speaks of " living in the Spirit " and " walking in the 
Spirit," in connection with correlated forms of speed;. 



20 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

But as Mr. Arnold has not, in common with Paul, any feel- 
ing of that supernatural order of things that set forth 
the promised influence of the Spirit as a gift pertaining 
to the kingdom of the divine Messiah, the u'^age of the 
New Testament could aid no one in interpreting the 
lecturer's meaning ; hence the unuttered call of sympathetic, 
inquiring minds was : " Give us light ! " As the biblical 
terminology was of no account in this case as a rule of inter- 
pretation, the thing needed on the part of Mr. Arnold, 
just then, was that he should state the genesis of his chosen 
phrase. But this was not done. The expression is ge- 
neric and takes its specific sense from its connection, or 
the known relations of the speaker. If uttered in a lecture 
by a leading Spiritualist, like Mr. Davis, it would suggest a 
definite meaning and certain weird associations. If em- 
ployed, as it might be, by Monsignor Capel, it would give 
forth a very different significance and that with a ritualistic 
impress. If sounded forth by Mr. Spurgeon, its evangelical 
meaning would be understood at once by the vast masses of 
every human grade attracted as his listeners. As Mr. 
Arnold, however, did not trace the genesis of his phrase we 
must turn for this to Mr. Emerson himself. The motto 
chosen by him for the title-page of his first book, " Na- 
ture," the quotation from Plotinus, already noted, points 
to the school and the master of his choice, suggests at 
once the defined meaning of the phrase, and sounds the 
key-note of Emersonian philosophy. The last words of 
Plotinus as he was leaving the world w^ere these: "I am 
striving with all my might to return the divine part of me 
to the Divine Whole who fills the Universe." 

" Professor F. D. Maurice, Cambridge, England, says in his 
History of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy:" "Whether 
Plotinus uttered these words or not as his spirit was depart- 
ing, they certainly express the effort of his life and the 
object of his philosophy." He, the philosopher, the for- 
mulator, the oracle of Neo-Platonism in the third century, 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 21 

was the leader of those " who would live in the Spirit," and 
afifirmed that in a state of ecstasy, zvithoiit ideas, he had been 
united to God who fills the universe. The only means of 
realizing this spirit-life were mortifications of the body, absti- 
nence, and meditation. These essentially Gnostic and Orien- 
tal devices for delivering the spirit from the power of the 
evil inherent in matter often induced insomnia, or sleep- 
lessness ; but he conscientiously and logically refused to 
take care of his health, to use a bath, or to partake of the 
nourishing food commended to his acceptance. This aspir- 
ing spiritual man had the courage of his convictions, was 
almost adored by his followers, Porphyrins, lamblichus, and 
Proclus, who repelled the thought of criticising his writings 
according to the rules that would determine one's judg- 
ments of other writings, but asserted that they were to be 
treated as divine revelations in interpreting the meanings of 
Plato as well as in communicating truths unknown before 
by the wise, and which "the vulgar herd were incapable of 
receiving." 

The men pertaining to this school, that so strongly 
attracted the sympathies of Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 
youthful manhood, were the representatives of a clearly 
defined ideal in regard to "living in the Spirit"; recog- 
nizing in a phrase like that the exponent of an ascetic dis- 
cipline, superior to Christianity in the fulness of those 
ecstatic "virtues " that could lift the spirit above the source 
of all evils in the earth-bound body, above the whole sense- 
world to a higher sphere, into an absorbing union with 
Deity ; and thus, to them the phrase would convey a simple 
meaning, and would be accepted as fitly describing a philo- 
sophical afifiliation. 

FANCIFUL CLASSIFICATIONS. 

This characterization, however, which Mr. Emerson, with 
his Neo-Platonic afifinities could sympathetically interpret, 
would not indicate the end and aim or the ethical style of 



22 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. His permanent place in 
history can not be thus distinguished. His biographers 
have often said that " in his ' Meditations ' we find no specu- 
lations on the absolute nature of the Deity; no clear expres- 
sion of an opinion as to a future state." Instead of any 
Gnostic moods of aspiration after an absorption into Deity, 
we discern the signs of a sceptical unsettledness as to the 
existence either of gods ruling over the present or of any 
conscious being to be realized in the future ; and thus, as 
in the mind of the leading fictionist of our time, George 
Eliot, the one reigning idea of DUTY comprised essentially 
the ^.ra'pQxovs philosophy, and an unconscious living in the 
life of posterity his only settled hope. These two moral 
forces derived their sustenance from that Stoic school of 
philosophy which was founded by Zeno amid the general 
decadence of the Greek mind, the weakness and wreckage 
following Pyrrhonic scepticism, to build up strength of 
character in the culture of individual minds, each one de- 
veloping all-sufficient resources from within itself, indepen- 
dently of all externalisms, civil or social. So, too, amid the 
moral wreckage issuing in the fall of the Roman Republic 
and the corruptions of Caesarism, the men in whom the 
sturdy, patriotic spirit of the ancient Roman Republi- 
cans still lived, instinctively rallied around the banner 
of the old Stoic philosophy, recognizing in Cato their ideal 
exponent and their political leader. Cato, defeated, decreed 
his own death in Utica. But the Stoic school did not go 
with him ; his last speech did not sound its death-knell ; 
it continued to transmit itself even unto the sixth genera- 
tion, and then found honorable burial in the tomb of 
Marcus Aurelius. 

A paragraph of an essay from the pen of Goldwin Smith 
recurs to memory in this connection : " Looking to Roman 
opinion, Cato probably did what honor dictated ; and those 
who prefer honor to life are not so numerous that we can 
afford to speak of them with scorn. 'The fool,' says Dr. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 23 

Mommsen, — regarding the drama of the Republic as closing 
with Cato's death, — ' The fool spoke the epilogue.' Whether 
Cato was a fool or not, it was not he that spoke the epi- 
logue. The epilogue was spoken by Marcus Aurelius, 
whose principles, political as well as philosophical, were 
identical with those for which Cato gave his life. All that 
time the Stoic and Republican party lived, sustained by the 
memory of its martyrs, and above them all by that of Cato. 
At first it struggled against the Empire ; at last it accepted 
it ; and, when the world was weary of Caesars, assumed the 
government and gave humanity the respite of the An- 
tonines." * Even so ; the government of Marcus Aurelius, 
like that of his adoptive father, Antoninus Pius, was the 
government of the philosophical and political party of Cato, 
constrained without any forethought of its own to accept, 
for the common good, the gift of Imperialism. But change 
of place changed not the spirit of the party as thus repre- 
sented, true still to its original aim, the cultivation of that 
primitive Roman virtue that had characterized the Repub- 
lic in its heroic days. 

This sudden uplifting of the party of the Stoic Cato into 
the seat of power, — this forty-two years' "respite" from 
Csesarism, — is an historical episode, quite exceptional ; not 
a normal development that any human mind could antici- 
pate as a possibility. Gibbon tells the story aptly when, 
having noted the extreme faultiness of Hadrian's life and 
then the unexpected recoil, it is added : " He resolved to 
deserve the thanks of posterity by placing the most exalted 
merit on the Roman throne. His discerning eye easily 
discovered a Senator about fifty years of age, blameless in 
all the offices of life, and a youth about seventeen whose 
riper years opened the fair prospect of every virtue ; the 
elder of these was declared the son and successor of Ha- 
drian, on condition, however, that he himself would imme- 

* " Lectures and Essays, by Goldwin Smith," New York, McMillan & Co., 
1881, p. 289 : " The Last Republicans of Rome." 



24 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

diately adopt the younger. The two Antonines, — for it is 
of them that we are now speaking — governed the Roman 
world forty-two years with the same invariable spirit of 
wisdom and virtue." In this last sentence Gibbon fitly 
phrases the supreme aim of the Antonines, — " the govern- 
ment of the Roman world " for the realization of a certain 
high type of character, distinguished by the primitive sim- 
plicity of manners and public spirit that had associated the 
Roman name with those ideas of dignity and moral power 
that had made them proud of the right to be called Romans. 
In his " Meditations" Aurelius charges himself to remem- 
ber ever that he is a Roman. This peculiar ideal, or ruling 
aim, it is evident, can not be accurately described or dis- 
tinctively suggested by Mr. Arnold's phrasing : " The Friend 
and Aider of those who would live in the Spirit." His con- 
temporaries of the school of Zeno and Cato would not be 
much helped by this mystical light in determining histori- 
cally the relative position of the Emperor, who was, indeed, 
a practical man, a jurist, a soldier, apt in the management 
of affairs, whose philosophy was really prudential wisdom 
like that of our own Franklin, a philosophy of observation 
and common-sense, all toned by the spirit of Stoical self- 
reliance. 

This doctrine of self-reliance was the dominating thought 
or sentiment of the Stoic school ; yet, though well trained 
in that school, Aurelius read widely and eclectically, quo- 
ting and praising Plato and Epicurus; and thence, of 
course, not to be classed exclusively with the devotees of 
any one Master. As Plotinus was not to make his appear- 
ance upon this earth before the first quarter of the follow- 
ing century, Aurelius could not have felt the fascination 
of the Neo-Platonic method of " living in the Spirit " as 
Mr. Emerson felt it, whose sentiment in hailing Plato as 
"the father of all thinkers since his day" the Emperor 
could not have shared even though he had heard that 
utterance from a contemporary, while remembering that 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 2$. 

Zeno, the earliest exemplar of his choice for imitation, had 
written against Plato's "Republic" because it treated men as 
born to subserve political ends, and thence as logically 
incapable of actualizing the grand Stoical idea of a self- 
sufficient manhood. That one idea remained as real and 
actual despite all contingencies or the failure of every 
hypothesis. He said and wrote that if there are gods he 
would pray to them, if none he would take care of himself: 
" In a word, if there is a God all is well ; and if Chance rules 
do not thou also be governed by it." " If a man has done 
wrong the harm is his own ; but perhaps he has not done 
wrong — that there are only atoms and nothing else but 
mixture and dispersion."* This soliloquy reveals the 
struggle of an unsettled mind keenly alive to the connec- 
tion between theology and morality, feeling after a positive 
basis of belief upon which to ground that eternal distinction 
between right and wrong which implies moral obligation 
and normal issues of good or evil. It does not suggest a 
state of mind capable of such a conception as that of a 
world-wide leadership in relation to those " who would live 
in the Spirit." 

GROUNDS OF COMPARISON NOTED. 

Of the written lectures read by Aurelius, occasionally, to 
assemblies of the people, there is nothing extant. The 
" Meditations," composed during several years of camp-life 
are all that have come down to us. Taking into view 
the situation of the parties — namely, that in recording 
these brief sentences somewhat in the style of a private 
diary, the Emperor had no intention of meeting the needs 
of any particular class of men or women aspiring "to live 
in the Spirit," and that Mr. Emerson certainly had such a 
purpose at the very outset of his course when he wrote 
to Thomas Carlyle of the encouragement that came to him 

* "Meditations of Marcus Aurelius." Boston Ed. Ticknor & Fields, 1864,, 
pp. 238, 239, 242. 



^^ RALPH H'ALDO EMERSON. 

from his surrounding of inquiring spirits, "young ladies and 
gentlemen seeking a new religion," by whom his warmest 
sympathies were won and kindled into brightening 
prophecies of a reconstructed Nature-worship, there seems 
to be but slight ground for classing together in one 
category these two writers while comparing their chief 
aims, their aspirations, their philosophical trendings, or 
ethical achievements. The contrasts are glaring and show 
up such a statement as rather fanciful. As sharp in boy- 
hood as in manhood were these contrasts of mental develop- 
ment. In the palatial homes of Rome and Lorium the 
Emperor, Marcus Antoninus Pius, the adoptive father 
of Aurelius, won the complete mastery of the youth's think- 
ing and feeling, awakened a Hfe-long ambition to realize 
the highest Stoical ideal of a self-reliant mind ; and, as the 
"Meditations" show, ever kept this supremacy. Young 
Emerson, on the other hand, insensible to the sway of 
any master-mind within the realm of home-life, attracted 
suddenly to new planes of thought by the most fascinating 
writer of the sixteenth century, whom, as a representative 
man, he has commemorated as " Montaigne, The Sceptic," 
and recoiling from the Puritan ecclesiasticism inherited 
from eight generations, recognized ere long in the Neo- 
Platonism of Plotinus the oracular revelations that quick- 
ened his desire to voice the new ideas that would re- 
construct a Nature-worship for the advancing inquirers of 
the nineteenth century, and thus render every human 
individuality conscious of being an all-sufficient law, 
prophet, and church unto itself. He exulted, therefore, in 
his outlook of a new era wherein leading minds, rising above 
the letter of inherited creedism, would thus "live in the 
Spirit"; but the Roman Emperor repelled with educated 
hatred the mere thought of any change involving a new 
future of the peoples' religion, sacrificed the best of free- 
thinking men to the idol of uniformity, and became a more 
cruel persecutor of Christians in France, Italy, and Asia 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 2/ 

Minor than any one of his predecessors that had reigned 
over the Roman world. 

Tlie ideas of the two writers were antagonistic : Mr. 
Emerson emphasizing the right of the individual mind to a 
sovereign freedom of thought within the sphere of religion 
as well as of philosophy ; while, on the other hand, the 
Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, was ever ready, in the interest 
of political unity and the traditional pride of an all-sufficient 
philosophy, to strike down with an iron sceptre all individ- 
uality of religious thinking or aspiration. To the view of 
Prof. Maurice it seems quite inadmissible that the high 
style of ethical sentiment that distinguished the author of 
the "Meditations" could co-exist in the same personality 
with the cruelty of the religious persecutor. Hence he is 
led to infer that Aurelius must have been misled by his 
deputies, and that he was ignorant of the facts, — perhaps 
even ignorant of the existence of the Christians. But these 
amiable attempts to solve a painful problem are unsustained 
by facts, and Aurelius' consultation of the "Rescript" of 
Trajan indicates an imperial policy studied up historically. 
The ruling idea of his statesmanship in regard to religious 
uniformity as essential to political unity and civil order 
necessitated logically the answer sent to the Governor of 
Gaul, seeking instructions : " Let everyone who confesses 
himself a Christian be put to death." It is not very likely 
that he was ignorant of the existence of Polycarp, Bishop 
of Smyrna, who was burned in that city in the seventh 
year of his reign, nor of the hosts of martyrdoms pertaining 
to that period. This alleged incongruity, the co-existence 
of a high and beautiful style of personal morals with the 
harsh bigotry of the religious persecutor, is not abnormal 
or rare, but appears in every age of European history, pagan 
or anti-pagan. It is the logical issue of a formulated state- 
religion legally established. 

Even in our colonial annals we are quite familiar with 
this style of character. Some of the leading Puritans 



28 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

who were responsible for the persecution of those Quakers 
who found a refuge in Rhode Island were men of amiable 
dispositions and high ethical excellence. But when the 
illusive idea, that religious uniformity is essential to civil 
order, had been accepted as a fundamental principle of 
statesmanship, all individualities would, of course, be 
sacrificed to the public necessity — the law of self-preserva- 
tion. In that case, the more pious the ruler the more 
sternly resolute would he be in yielding up all things 
private or merely personal at the call of duty, as by him 
interpreted. Thus, indeed, when Roger Williams had 
crossed the Atlantic to procure from the British Throne a 
charter for the freedom of religion in the State of Rhode 
Island, the ecclesiastical counsellers of Charles II. opposed 
the grant, and that charter came forth from the most 
frivolous king that England had ever known, seemingly 
inspired of God, as Williams said, to rise with the occasion 
and assert his determination to " experiment " whether 
civil order were consistent with such large liberty. Just 
at this point in our line of comparison the deeply marked 
contrast between the Emperor and Emerson more clearly 
appears ; for the latter really believed that " the State was 
made for the individual and not the individual for the 
State," — as Dr. Channing used to put the vital doctrine. 
But no man, even as gentle as Emerson, could have uttered 
such a doctrine in the presence of Aurelius except " at his 
peril." Neither could any man, even the godlike Milton, 
have safely expressed that idea in the presence of the 
blamelessly moral and devotedly religious King of England, 
Charles I. How very far were these lofty moralists from 
any assimilation with any order of men who could be 
specially designated "Aiders of those who would live in the 
Spirit." 

In this connection let it be noted, too, that when Marcus 
Aurelius was in Athens he was initiated into the Eleusinian 
Mysteries, and this fact has led his biographers to observe 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 29 

that it was his policy to conform to all the traditional re- 
ligious observances of the difTerent countries where he 
might chance to be. The restorer of Neo-Platonism, Ploti- 
nu5, would not stoop to such conformity, believing, as he 
did, in the direct revelations from the infinite to the finite 
mind ; and hence, when his disciple Amelius invited him 
to share in the sacrifice offered to the gods, on occasions, 
his answer was : " It is not my part to go to them, but 
theirs to come to me." As a man thus " living in the 
Spirit " he rose superior to all such externalisms. So, too, 
Mr. Emerson refused to participate with the Unitarian con- 
gregation, to whom he was preaching, in the participation 
of the Lord's Supper, rising above even that externalism 
" in the life of the Spirit." If, therefore, it had been said of 
him that, like Plotiniis, he was " the Friend and Aider of 
those who would live in the Spirit," the phrase would fitly 
designate a class of persons recognizing spiritual kinship 
and a unity of ideas ; but to ignore Plotinus entirely, and 
to name Marcus Aurelius, the politic conformist at all 
altars, the oppressor of individual consciences, as the type 
of Emersonianism, is, to say the least, a fanciful and mysti- 
fying classification. It lacks lucidity. The characters lack 
affinities ; the generic expression, " those who would live 
in the Spirit," does not fitly range them together. The case 
lacks analysis, and there is no synthesis. We are reminded 
of a remark of John Stuart Mill on the difficulty of getting 
at the -meaning of the early Greek philosophers, because 
" the terms which embody it have no equivalents in modern 
language, which, having fitted itself to the more definite 
conception of problems, has got rid of many of the vague- 
nesses and ambiguities to which the early conjectural solu- 
tions were principally indebted for what plausibility they 
possessed." 

What position of highest eminence, then, does the recent 
judicial criticism of the great English Essayist assign to Mr. 
Emerson ? Having denied that he was a great poet, a great 



30 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

writer, or a great philosopher, we are called upon to honor 
him as the successor of an imperial moralist who never be- 
queathed to the world a single sentence with the set pur- 
pose of uplifting humanity to a higher plane of intellectual, 
moral, or spiritual life. The assigned position is one of 
dubious significance, of "vaguenesses and ambiguities" 
mystifying some minds and awakening enthusiasm in 
none. 

THE NEW POSITIVE SCHOOL OF EMERSONIANISM. 

On the other hand, by some advanced schools of " Modern 
Thought" speaking through the pulpit and the press, Mr. 
Emerson's place in history has been enthusiastically set 
forth in plain language, needing no aid of side-lights or 
" Comparative Theology " to fix its meaning. Thus : 
" Emerson is the revealing prophet of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, the successor of Jesus Christ as the inaugurator of 
a new era." This is not a quotation from Rev. Dr. Bartol's 
sermon, delivered in Boston, on the Sunday following Mr. 
Arnold's lecture in that city, although, from first to last, 
that discourse, teeming with plus life (an Emersonianism), 
afifirmed the same sentiment. That designation would be a 
fitting motto for inscription upon the banner around which 
aspiring spirits may rally in concert for the fulfilment of the 
brilliant oracle. What will come of it ? Will it make a 
record of its own as a fourth attempt to revive Neo-Platon- 
ism, combining idealized science with fresh revelations, 
thus associating historically the names of four great cities — 
Alexandria, Rome, Florence, and Boston ? 

No ; this cherished hope, like others of its kin, will fail. 
Marcus Aurelius had no successor after his own likeness. 
When he had died the Roman Empire was quickly dis- 
integrated, and his whole life-battle for its maintenance was 
a waste of power. Thus, to-day, while musing, as at the 
beginning, over the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, we 
recognize now as ever his imperial genius as one of the 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. S^t 

greatest of writers ; at the same time, his life-work, as a whole, 
tested by its supreme ideal, its method and fruitage, shows 
also a great waste of power, verifying the saying of Jesus 
touching the harvest of human life : " HE that gathereth 
NOT with me SCATTERETH ABROAD." 



Ralph Waldo Emerson 

A PAPER READ BEFORE THE 

NEW YORK GENEALOGICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY 

December 14, 1883 

WITH 

AFTERTHOUGHTS 



WILLIAM HAGUE, D.D. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK : 27 & 29 WEST 23D STREET 
LONDON : 25 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN 

1884 



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